Do You Need the Apple Watch?

I first got to wear—and briefly operate—an Apple Watch during a secret preview in January, and for the past four days have tested one extensively on the bike and off, a period that’s just enough to provide some idea of whether cyclists will find the device useful or revolutionary, but nowhere near enough to fully understand or benefit from its capabilities.

You need to live with the Watch for awhile. And that’s sort of the take-away for me. If you trust that Apple can do for health and fitness what it did for desktop computing, music storage and delivery, and smartphone technology, get a Watch as quick as you can. If not, give the early adopters six months or so to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses and push it in directions and to limits its makers didn’t anticipate (a common outcome of real-life market testing), then re-evaluate.

There are going to be all kinds of general reviews and rundowns of the Watch out there. Instead of documenting all the features, let’s look at it strictly from the cyclist’s point of view.

One of the four things that for me sets the Watch apart from other wrist-based fitness trackers or performance monitors — and that also makes it preferable to just using your iPhone to run Strava or answer a call, text, or email mid-ride — is the factor that takes longest to appreciate and utilize: Its potential to integrate disparate parts of your life in a more seamless use of technology and communication. Here are a few examples that have struck me over the past four days:

Answering texts without using your phone. As with other smart fitness trackers, the Apple Watch notifies you of incoming texts and emails, and allows you to respond to texts with a menu of pre-set phrases such as “What’s up?” or “I’m on my way.” But with Apple, you can dictate and send a reply (or an animated emoji, if that’s your thing). It’s one thing to be riding and be able to glance at your watch to see if a text is worth stopping to reply to—but it’s a whole new level to, if the road is quiet and unoccupied, also be able to dictate a custom reply as you roll along. (You can read but not compose email from the Watch; Apple’s philosophy, at least right now, seems to be that the Watch is intended for quick, easy communications or operations such as texting, and that tasks that require more time, attention, or thought, such as emailing, are best by phone.)

Taking or making phone calls without your phone. On rides, this is so much more convenient with the Apple Watch than text or email that I feel like it might revive what for me has become a passé mode of communicating—actually talking to people. You can accept or decline a call by tapping the face (or decline it by covering the face with your other hand), or launch a call with a voice command. Volume and clarity are good, but can really degrade depending on wind noise.

“Hey, Siri . . .” Call someone. Find the nearest convenience store. Find out exactly how much time you have to get home before sun sets.

Controlling your music—if you ride with earbuds (which Bicycling doesn’t recommend but also acknowledges is common).

It’s not much more of a hassle to pull your phone out of your jersey pocket to do any of these things, but it’s the cumulative ease of accomplishing so many small tasks that has me wondering if the Watch is going to feel irreplaceable to me at some point—a little bit like when shifting moved from the down tube to the brake hoods.

The second thing that makes the Apple Watch stand apart is that it’s not a closed device; it’s a delivery vehicle for all the apps and functionality that will be developed for it. When you buy the Watch you’re not stuck with its own integrated workout tracker (which most cyclists will find basic and just okay) or any other software—you’re also buying a new way to access Strava (already available in an app that’s optimized for wrist use), or Map My Ride (coming soon, the company says), or whatever your favorite app is, as well as all the cycling-oriented apps yet to be conceived. This is where being an Apple believer really comes in.

Third is the playfulness. The animated emoji are fun. So is the functionality that lets me send a sketch to another Watch user by drawing on the screen with my finger, tapping it to deliver little fireworky pops, or transmitting my heartbeat by holding two fingers on the screen (this last feature proving to be not only bizarrely intriguing—hey, here’s how I feel after climbing up #&%#! Corning—but also so deeply intimate it’s kind of unsettling; you feel the heartbeat from the underside of the watch, tapping out against your own skin).

This being Apple, even information such as general health and wellness metrics are presented in an entertaining way rather than solely in charts or raw numbers (which are there and can be accessed). The integrated trackers for exercise movement (which pick up and cumulate any intensity beyond light walking, really), active calorie burn, and how often you stand are presented in colored rings that progress toward being a complete circle as you approach your goal.

The fourth advantage the Watch has, at least for me, is style. Mostly for aesthetic reasons, I abhor mounting computers on my bike, so when I want to track metrics or follow a route, I prefer wrist-mounted devices. But because those scream sport or geek-tech, I don’t like wearing them off the bike. The case of the Apple Watch (thank you Johnny Ive) is understated, the screen goes black until you lift or turn your wrist to use the watch, and the available faces range from super-minimal to bold, color-curated choices. The $349 Sport model I’m testing—the lowest-priced option—came with a fluo-green rubber band, but with a simple click on the underside of the watch I can change it out to a stainless steel link or mesh bracelet, or French or Italian leather.

It’s this all-day wearability and integrated-across-my-life functionality that just might make the Apple Watch an essential for me. It’s not just a ride computer, and not just a smart watch, and not just a health and fitness tracker. It makes lots of things, from controlling the tunes played on my office bluetooth speaker, to staying in touch with my family while riding, a little more convenient. And, whereas some studies have shown that health-and-wellness features such as the stand-up-now alerts on fitness trackers can come to be seen as gimmicky and eventually ignored, if the Apple Watch stays on my wrist for many other reasons, I’m more likely to end up using and benefiting from the stand alert. (Common revelation: I sit way too much.)

I was a first-generation iPod and iPad buyer, so I’m excited to keep trying out the Watch. I don’t know yet if it will be the magic, always-on device that crosses all the parts of my life. Already, I know that in minor ways it’s certainly not perfect: The haptic—the wrist-tapping notification—is too weak to feel on an intense bike ride, even turned to its highest level; the screen can be so tough to read in sunlight that you need to shade it with another hand or in some other way; on long rides, the heart monitor will drain the battery—although you can avoid this by pairing with any Bluetooth-capable chest strap. (The heart monitor, by the way, is fairly accurate, and during general rides as well as an intense criterium gave me readings consistent with those I’ve gotten from dedicated monitors.) And I kind of already miss wearing my mechanical, automatic, limited-edition John Coltrane Oris. One of the main criticisms for some athletes, such as runners and swimmers—for full functionality, including GPS, you need a Bluetooth or Wifi connection to your phone—isn’t really an issue for cyclists, who are used to having our phones in our jersey pockets.

At the least, the Apple Watch seems to me far better than any other smart fitness tracker, and a cool extension of my phone when it comes to everyday living. It’s certainly not vital but definitely some kind of life upgrade to not have to pull my phone out of my pocket to text, or turn the music volume down, or find out who’s posted on Instagram lately. (The pictures are too tiny to really see, but you can quickly judge if your stream is worth checking out for real on your phone.) The playful elements are, you know, fun.

Will it make the riding experience, and our overall lives as cyclists, better? Almost certainly. Transformative? Maybe—a lot of that depends on the creation of third-party apps still not to market or perhaps even imagined yet. (Think of how Strava made GPS bike computers about so much more than capturing ride data or viewing maps.) Should you buy one? You likely were already leaning toward your answer, and just needed some more information or some confirmation to make the choice. While you decide, I’m going to stand up and walk around a little—my watch just reminded me I should if I want to stay healthy and strong.

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